Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

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June 29, 2005

NECC Takes a Soak in the Podcasting Jacuzzi

David Warlick gets down with another podcast at the Apple Podcast Marathon

Even though podcasting was barely on the lips of anyone - let alone educators - when the NECC conference program was planned early last autumn, somehow the conference organizers managed to jump on the bandwagon with surprising success. With assistance from Apple and a team of Apple Distinguished Educators, NECC organizers have posted a series of podcasts from the conference, including recordings of sessions, an interview with the mayor of Philadelphia, and a podcast tour of Philly. Apple also hosted a podcast marathon last night in conjunction with the release of their podcast-friendly iTunes 4.9. They reserved a room that was supposed to fit only 120 people. When I showed up last night about 45 minutes before the session, there was a line out the door and around the corner. So many people showed up that they had to schedule a repeat session the following hour. Both were standing-room-only. I don't remember the last time I saw so many educators psyched about a new tool that didn't even have a classroom track record yet.

The excitement was palpable; Dave Warlick and I recorded simultaneous podcasts as the crowd waited to go inside, talking with people and learning about their interests in podcasting. Inside the room, Barnaby Wasson led a team of Apple Distinguished Educators giving an overview of podcasting and a demo of the new iTunes. He also introduced participants to mobile podcasting, encouraging them to set up a Blogger account so they could use Audioblogger for recording podcasts from their phone. One thing he neglected to mention was the need for a Feedburner RSS feed, since Blogger's feed isn't podcast-friendly; I made a note of it during ther Q&A session and Barnaby promised to add the info to their presentation slides so participants wouldn't accidentally leave out this important, albeit technical, step in the podcasting process.

Meanwhile, there were probably at least half a dozen podcasting educators wandering the halls of the conference, posting recordings left and right. Now that I'm heading home I'll definitely check out the various feeds, including Dave's and Steve Dembo's, so I can live vicariously through their podcasts. They're both off to a great start, so I can't wait to see what else they'll be doing there.

Last but not least, here's an overly excited podcast I recorded a few moments after the Apple podcast marathon. -andy

Posted by acarvin at June 29, 2005 5:17 PM

Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article